Sprints, leaps and baby steps – What it takes to make an intranet strategy work.

Next week I’m speaking at Intranätverk – the newest star on the intranet conference sky. Kristian Norling has done a remarkable job of putting together a great lineup of speakers mostly from Sweden but also some notable people from around Europe. Kristian promises to bring a twist to the regular intranet conference and I am happy to play my part in making this happen.

My talk will be about intranet strategy and how we at Grundfos have been quite successful with a more sustained model but now find ourselves faced with a challenge. It will not be about Sharepoint although there IS new version out there which is awfully hard to ignore. Heck, just last week I walked though Copenhagen Airport where Microsoft banners lined the security check area. I’m sure there are a whole bunch of jokes that can be made based on that but I’ll leave that up to you J

A new Sharepoint – that also means that whenever intranet peers meet it doesn’t take very long before the conversations turns to the topic of this new version. Sometimes it makes good sense to upgrade but all too often this is done simply because an eager and very tech focused intranet manager wants the newest version. An even more common scenario is that the IT department tells the intranet team that they will now upgrade to the latest version as a part of the overall strategy (or some other reason) with no questions asked.

Let me always having the most recent piece of software is NOT a strategy. It’s an operational thing. Even if it is labeled as a strategic ambition, it is an incredibly stupid one! Strategies need to be made around what the platform – be that the intranet, record management system or something else – can help your colleagues, the users, achieve.

What about the scenario where the USERS are the ones asking for the new version of a given platform? It is not at all a common thing so I was really surprised that when Grundfos announced that the entire company should move to MS Office 365 I was approached by quite a few who excitedly asked “when are we getting Sharepoint?”. Why was that?

The answer is buried in the fact that our intranet is more than 10 years old. It is grown with the company and with the needs of my colleagues but more importantly, it has grown INSIDE the organization and little heed has been given to the outside world since our intranet was – and is – doing a good job. We are in a situation where we have had great success growing our intranet with the company to serve the needs of our colleagues but if you compare to what’s going on elsewhere it is clear that what started as a small discrepancy – a hairline fracture – has now grown into a big crevasse and we now need to prepare to take a big leap.

This is obviously a very daunting task but nevertheless one that has to be done. If we fail to do so people will start looking elsewhere. In Grundfos we have seen a spectacular uptake on the use of Yammer which I think is excellent but it also underlines my point that although a sustainable development model is the best way forward you inadvertently find yourself in a situation where radical change is needed. It’s a fact of life!

So how do you create an intranet strategy that work? My answer is short and simple: Make sure that you always grow with the company. Users hate surprises but every once in a (great) while you need to take a great leap forward to catch up otherwise people will be leaving. Most importantly you should never, ever stop listening to what your customers really need and it is NEVER “the latest version of SharePoint”…

—————————————–

If you are interested in reading more about my thoughts on the development gap that I have outlined here, I hope that I’ll see you in Gothenburg. If not, you can take a closer look at the J. Boye blog where I wrote a blogpost titled “Mind the gap – also when developing your intranet”

It’s like Facebook – and it’s OK…

You’ve seen them: 7 steps for a more social enterprise, 3 top-tips for increasing employee engagement, 5 strategies for…. These are all very good and useful, although rather repetitive, but one thing is always left out: The fact that Social networking is for entertainment – not for work! Or at least that’s the way many people still see social media.

I have been working actively on an internal Yammer project for the last 8 months and while we have had lots of people sign up and also quite a few engaging actively in the discussions on the platform. Notwithstanding the relatively large contingent of people who are not active, we think that it has been a quite successful journey – more about this journey in later posts.

Introducing Yammer to the masses.
Nothing beats face to face contact so My colleague and I have introduced and demoed Yammer and what it can do for a certain department at department meetings and conferences. Two statements have stood out and we hear them almost everywhere.

1. We don’t have time for a new tool.
2. it’s almost like Facebook.

The first preconception is relatively easy to address with the simple answer that you need to take some time to get used to a new tool – any new tool – and that this obviously starts with a cultural change and a handshake that a given group of people will give it a try. As always, with things that requite a change of habits, it is much easier said than done but that’s also a topic for another post.

We always start every introduction by asking a few questions about people’s social media habits and since Denmark is one of the countries where Facebook has the highest penetration rate everybody know Facebook – also if they don’t have a profile. Usually this is very helpful and people who compare it to Facebook will be more prone just to get started but there is another side to this statement. Why does this matter in relation to social media at work? More importantly: Why does the Yammer/Facebook comparison pose a challenge for user adoption?

Entering the ‘Corporate Facebook’
In Denmark we have, like many other places, lots of stories in the media about what social media can and cannot do and along with this also quite a few stories about people losing their jobs or getting bullied on various social media. Additionally some of the larger Danish unions early on told people to be very careful with what they share on social media – especially when it comes to work. People listened and learned. Companies were also quick to announce that social media (ie. Facebook activity) was banned or should be minimized during working hours. Again people listened and learned. Just imagine what could happen if I started using Facebook during my workday…

This is where we are today. Our colleagues have been ‘brought up’ with the fact that social media is something that belongs in the private sphere and when you are at work the use of social tools should be kept to a minimum.

Next thing you know is that your manager has invited two strange guys who are talking about how important it is that we share information in the company and how important it is to ‘break down silos’ – and then they show a tool that looks just like Facebook. WHOA! Slow down! Less than a year ago we weren’t supposed to use this stuff at work – and now you’re saying what…..?

What basically happens is that in addition to the change of habits that is connected with the introduction of a new work tool you also have to come to terms with the fact that you must abandon the thought that using social networks is something you do in your private life – certainly not during 9 to 5. It is not real work! You may argue that this is an ‘age-thing’ and to a certain extent you are right. There ARE more young people among the early adopters but you would be surprised how many 20 and 30-year-olds who roll your eyes at you in the beginning of each presentation, some even saying out loud that these social networks are a waste of time and that they have no place in a work context.

It starts with the managers
I’ve had this talk with quite a few managers who have been wondering why the adoption is relatively slow even if the group has received introductions, training and it has been given an official seal of approval. When we talk about the change of habit and that social networking in a work context largely is like eating forbidden fruit, the manager often realizes how much more there is to it than just throw a new tool into the mix.

The biggest upside is that the “Facebook is not for work” argument works – it makes intuitively sense and it helps underline the importance of the change management effort connected with these tools and I believe that it will ultimately improve adoption. It still takes the 5, 7 and 10 tips that I mentioned in the beginning in order to truly succeed but make sure that you repeat after me over and over: “Yes! It’s like Facebook… and it’s OK…. Really….”

The first rule of Sharepoint is…

You do not talk about Sharepoint! I’m sure there are many other Fight Club related quotes to be said about intranets and platforms but the one mentioned here is very appropriate for my experiences from two conferences in the past month.

I have enjoyed the privelege of speaking at J. Boye 2012 in Aarhus and Intranett 2012 in Oslo and what stood out at both events was that technology is no longer taking center stage when you talk about intranets. Until very recent you could not attend an intranet event without half of the presentations were either about social media orSharepoint. Now we are talking about search, user experience, content strategy, etc. – why this change?

Part of the explanation is maturity. The technology platforms that intranets are built on have come of age and it is no longer common to hear of big migration projects or big bang launches (the latter, I find particularly good). The platforms now develop more consistently and continuously which makes the need to perform the “quantum leaps” of the past much less. Another part of the explanation might just be that many companies have been forced to prioritise differently due to the struggling economy. This means that you need to make ends meet and use what you already have.

The other big part and also the big upside is that the user is now in focus. It’s now about efficiency and productivity and to achieve this you must focus on the user experience. In my opinion this is indeed great news for both the end users but also for intranets in general.

Smarter business in the year 2012 – also on paper…

I have attended a fair share of conferences and event – some good, some bad. One thing that always makes me a little apprehensive is when the big vendors invite to the big annual events. It’s always a good chance to see all the new stuff in action but more often than not they roll out the red carpet and present a ‘Big Mac’ event. Big Mac in the sense that it’s beautifully presented but leaves few lasting impressions other than you are hungry again two hours later.

This morning I boarded the train from Aarhus at 05.42 with a slight apprehension and when I entered the beautiful venue 3½ hours later it was reinforced by the fact that it turned out to be a HUGE event. I don’t know what I had expected but a crowd of 1000+ delegates was certainly not it!

At the time of writing this I am on my way home from what ended up being one of the best events of its kind that I have attended for a long time. It would be a shame to say that my world was turned upside down but it was very refreshing to hear how IBM works with social business externally. Susan Emerick explained how everyone in IBM has the opportunity to participate on social platforms but also how they identify talent and resource people internally and make their participation an important part of their strategic go to market initiatives.

One of their very important conclusions was that the ‘digital engagement’ was 3 times more effective than the traditional digital marketing. I spoke to Susan afterwards where she reiterated this point – find an applicable area where you are likely to create new business opportunities – dedicate a portion of your budget to the new initiative – and compare…

The comparison obviously requires measurement. Measurement inevitably categorises content (and even people) as good or bad in terms of their digital efforts. In my opinion, this will become an inconvenient truth for many people in the social business. If you listen to many experts in this area they are advocating various pseudo-metrics related to how engaging you are but in the end it all boils down to what can be documented on the bottom line……or as Jerry McGuire would say – uhm, well, shout – SHOW ME THE MONEY!!

The Swedish Chef in action (photo by @unwiredchris)

However, the main topic for the social business track remained the challenges of creating an organization where the people and the culture embrace the value of sharing information and knowledge openly. Until this change is brought about it makes little sense to talk

about business opportunities in stead we need to focus our energy on getting the right mix of ingredients that make up a proper social business and this both begins and ends with cultural change – or to paraphrase ‘the Swedish chef’ Christian Carlsson who introduced the metaphor of social business components as ingredients in a bread:

“Culture is the yeast that makes a social business rise”

Enough about food….. What about the paper mentioned in the header? Well, I was not the only one who was surprised when all participants was reminded to fill out the evaluation form and hand it in before we left. I couldn’t help but to ask if that was what IBM defined as “smarter business” but as it turned out, they had learned that online forms were not nearly as effective for gathering feedback. Agree or disagree, if that’s the case then a piece of paper CAN be a smarter way – also in our hyper-connected world.

Relevance, Resonance, and the Digital Ninjas – Adobe Summit 2012

On my way from work today I heard a somewhat funny segment about how companies increasingly were looking for ‘ninjas’ when hiring new people. In fact the job ads mentioning ‘ninjas’ were up 2500% compared to last year – not to mention the jedis and rock stars who also seem to be in great demand.

I couldn’t help but related it to last week’s Adobe Digital Marketing Summit in London where I came face to face with the digital marketing world once again – a world which I have been a little out of sync with after moving into the intranet realm about 5 years ago. All the more interesting it allowed me to pinpoint some of the development that has happened for the digital marketing professionals and how online marketing has transformed from being very creative profession to become that of number crunchers and controller – maybe even Ninja-controllers…

This is a positive thing. It doesn’t only show that online marketing is reaching a new level of maturity but also that we are getting better and better at leveraging the true strength of online media: Everything can be measured! I posted a tweet about the fact that ‘big data’ was largely absent, but a reply made me realize that these guys don’t think about the concept of ‘big data’ – they are already using these vast amounts of data every day to track what we buy and what our friends recommend all to make sure that we get a tailored, personalized experience throughout the web – and hopefully we’ll buy some stuff along the way.

Honestly, I found some of the insights gained a little disturbing. Everything is about the personalized experience which is all well and good, but if everything is based on what my friends (and friend’s friends) do online are we then not running a risk of losing the individuality somewhere along the way? If you use the internet and social media to seek new inspiration about whatever and all you see is information based on what your friends have done, is it then really new inspiration or are we running around in a circle where we become more and more alike and a circle that becomes more and more tightly knit?

Arianna Huffington gave a very inspiring keynote which was closely related to the above. Like many others she made the point that the ubiquitous social networks makes us more disconnected to ourselves and that we need to remember to disconnect, but more interestingly she also talked about how companies focus heavily on relevance and not resonance. Relevance can be created based on actionable data because you then know what I want and like. Resonance is different: You need to provoke thoughts, challenge my opinions, even my view of the world. There’s no guaranteed sale in resonance, but if you succeed you can rest assured that you have something way more valuable than a mere customer.

———————————————–

The conference? If conversion rates, lifetime customer value, repeat purchases, and those kinds of things are your game then it’s a great event and you should certainly go. If you, like me, focus on the digital workplace within companies and the disruption going on here, I believe that there are better choices for inspiration.

I got some good good input about data privacy, interesting sneak peeks, and – as already mentioned – a very inspiring keynote from Arianna Huffington but other than that it missed the mark for me.

Thoughts and takeaways from the Enterprise 2.0 Summit – Day 1

The opening keynote of this Paris event was a shared session with Rawn Shah from IBM and Yves Caseau from Bouygues Telecom titled “Understanding Social Business Excellence”. Rawn started out with an excellent presentation about the importance of harnessing the pervasive conversations emerging in companies and linking them to the business goals. It may sound very simple, and the prescribed formula was also very easy to understand and pragmatic. How you adapt it to fit your own organization and the objectives of your Line of Business is a different topic.

One thing that struck me during both presentations was that social business practitioners on one hand seem to be in a hurry to denounce Frederick Taylor’s principles of scientific management and on the other hand can’t seem to get everything measured and aligned with Lean and other somewhat traditional management processes. We also talk a lot about engagement and trust, but the minute people actually start to engage, we shift focus to monitoring what they do. I find this somewhat ironic, but I also think it goes to show that many of these principles are still in full working order when it comes to our production environments, but also that we need to revisit and revise these ideas to include the knowledge workers of the 21st century as well.

A topic that was touched upon in many talks was motivation and rewards which made gamification a ‘hot’ topic. Interestingly enough, when speakers from companies who have well established communities were on stage, rewards and motivation were not something of their concern. I’m 100% sure that it has not come over night and that while extrinsic motivation through eg. gamification may help increase adoption, it is the intrinsic motivators that make people come back and turn it into a vibrant community. I see quite a few analogies to Herzberg’s two-factor theory, but that’s a topic for another day.

Jon Mell from IBM and Jerome Colombe from Alcatel Lucent were prime examples of two companies with thriving communities. It quickly comes down to culture and management support and as Jon argued that if management sees Engagement as ‘free work’ you are not likely to succeed in creating communities. In Alcatel Lucent there is a very strong backing from the CEO which I believe is the key to their success. They have community ambassadors, but the title sounds like a voluntary/honorary title – much like the concept of the “Yammer midwife” I heard about at a recent event. Both great concepts but that degree of volunteerism is hard to achieve in many organisations.

Like many others I have been struggling with the term “Social Collaboration” (Can you collaborate without being social?), but today I heard a fresh take on this. Collaboration was a shift in technology – Social was (is) a shift in culture. Agree or disagree, I think it makes a lot of sense to look at it like that and now I am not so sure that I will continue crusading against the term social collaboration

These were my main thoughts after the first day of the #e20s, as the event is known under on Twitter. I already look forward to more interesting insights tomorrow. If you are interested in a more detailed account of the presentations, head over to Samuel Driessen’s blog where he has been live-blogging from many presentations.

About organisational inertia – and trees…

Summer has come and gone – some argue that it was never really in Denmark – and today I was reminded of an article from N/N Group that was published in the slow summer weeks. It was about  inertia in the organisation. I sat in a status meeting which inevitably moved on to discuss budgets, or maybe the lack of the same. In the midst of this, I remembered this passage:

Although big organizations get the biggest ROI from intranet improvements, they might suffer under a particular type of ambition inertia: upper management has often been in the same company for a decade or more, so they’ve never experienced how good intranets can get in other companies. This can make them reluctant to sponsor a new portal.

I both agree and disagree. True. You need input from “the outside”, but could the inertia be rooted somewhere else? Let’s look at the IT departments. IT is a cost, right? Over the last couple of years we’ve had to spend less on everything from heavy machinery to paper clips – surely we can use a little less IT while we are at it. The problem is that IT is not a commodity. You can work smarter, negotiate better contracts, etc. but in the end it’s a bit like trimming a tree. If you do it carefully it will look nicer next year, but if you cut off too many of the big branches it will take many years for it to recover, let alone look nice.

In my opinion this is what has happened in many organisations. Some of the “strategic” branches have been cut so far back that there’s hardly anything left and all there is to do is to wait for it to grow back. You may have a nice strategy for your portal, but with no ressources to back it up you are not going to get very far. Add to that the notoriously difficult task of justifying investments in knowledge sharing – You might as well get the camping gear out now since you’ll be staring at that tree for a loooooong time!

The fact that management never saw a proper intranet may have caused ambition inertia, but a very unnuanced view on IT may (inadvertently) have put IT (and the Intranet team) in a position where they are stuck with an old, decimated ‘tree’ and have no chance to create solutions that support business goals and in turn this is very likely to reflect poorly on – guess who – the IT and/or intranet team…

All there is left to do is to hope for someone to stop by with a beautiful new tree – someone who believes in change for the better.

There’s an app for that – but do we need one?

How often haven’t you heard the expression “There’s an app for that!”. Among online pros it is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek comment, but unfortunately other are listening and it seems like they have the impression that if there’s NOT an app for that we certainly need to build one!

Look! Apps! (by Cristiano Betta)

But wait a minute – Don’t we need a proper, rock-solid business case? Nope. Not this time. Apps are great. Just great. And we’ll be first movers – that’s value enough!

…Eh?!?…

Admitted. Not the usual approach, but for once someone has seen the infamous light and they believe – a rare thing these days, but also where many great things start.

In other words, and to answer my own question from the header: YES! We need the app! If everything goes as planned you will end up with a (free) test for mobile platforms for internal communication which – for the likes of me – is far from revolutionary, but is a giant leap of almost Neil Armstrong’ish proportions for others. Success is not a given, but with solid backing and strong interest you are certainly on the right track – even before you get going properly.

A few cautionary thoughts have also entered my mind: I’m not saying that we shouldn’t build apps and explore all the new exciting corners, but it is our responsibility as online pros to look beyond the novelty effect and make sure that it fits in with the rest (…dare I mention Second Life?). One day the novelty wears off and the last thing we want is to be the last ones at the party having to clean up after the others just because something was cool for 15 minutes. There’s not much fun in that!

——————

Stay tuned for updates – the above is a summary of my own thoughts following an app-discussion and at the time of writing things are looking good

Another year – another survey

Admitted! I am fed up with user satisfaction surveys and has been for a while, but here I find myself preparing this year’s edition of our Intranet Satisfaction Survey – in other words, ready to spam a few thousand of my fellow employees. A good, and very relevant, question from my colleague was “What would you like to achieve with it?” got me thinking about the big “why?”. I know that very little has happened on the intranet over the last 12 months which effectively means that we are stuck more or less exactly where we are last year. This is of course sad, but also a perfect reason for running a survey.

Not only will you get an immediate picture of what that the state of the intranet is right now, but you also get a clear picture of what happens if you DON’T do anything to improve or just make some adjustments. In several conversations I have promoted the view that the most important characteristic about a good intranet is that it continuously adapts to the company. If it has stalled the company has either moved away from the intranet which is rather worrying or the company is going bust which is even worse!

Regardless of the outcome it will be really interesting to see the development and while painting a bleak picture in the above, we have made some improvements in the collaboration area so I have a hope that this can serve as a good example to be followed – that you need to invest to improve.

In other words, I’m sending out a survey to a bunch of people and in 8 of 10 areas I hope for the worst – Wish me luck!

Meeting the masters

I am writing this at the airport after two very inspiring days at the Employee Portal Evolution Masters in Berlin – lots of great input and great people.

Monday night I hosted an informal interactive evening session. The topic on the agenda was the future of intranets, but it quickly turned into a talk about social media – which had been the big underlying theme all day – and how to handle this inside an organisation.

The two major takeaways from the session was that Social Media require some kind of training and that your company culture needs to be ready for openness.

I would like to share one of the suggested approaches with regards to training for you to consider. It is quite eimple and as a beginning you divide the people active on social media into some groups. An example could be:

1. Designated participants officially representing the company.
2. Those who mix work and private life in their social media presence.
3. People who participate privately but may have the odd workrelated contribution.

The first ones obviously require training like any other media representative – you wouldn’t put someone in front of a TV camera without a minimum of media training!

The second and third are the tricky ones. Seen from a risk management point of view, I believe that the ones in the second category should be the main concern. They often know what they are doing and may inadvertently post something that will prove harmful to the company. The third group also pose a risk. but since they mainly use social media privately this risk is smaller.

Everybody agreed that what we have seen in relation to social media is just the tip of the iceberg. One delegate shared a little story about when the phone was introduced in companies. He remembered meetings where it was being discussed whether or not everybody should have a phone or if it was OK with one per department! Nobody questioned that the phone made sense, but how much, and for what, would it be used….. I think it sounds familiar!

I would like to extend a big thank you to all delegates and speakers and if you are interested in learning more from the conference, I can recommend that you head over to Samuel Driessen’s blog where you can read much more.